


It's a Salarian song

by thelastperformer



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 21:25:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9922733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelastperformer/pseuds/thelastperformer
Summary: She dreamed Mordin was singing to her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> They never really explain what that thing is around Mordin's neck..
> 
> Uhhh spoilers if you haven't played Mass Effect 3?

She dreamed he was singing to her. Not in the same way that he hummed or mumbled to himself when he was working, like he didn’t realize he was doing it, or even the same way he sang Gilbert and Sullivan, like he was singing for attention, for an audience. Mordin was singing to her, for her, like the way Thane had prayed for her.  
She listened, still too surprised to compliment him, but too moved to crack a joke.  
“It’s a salarian song,” he explained, and Shepard wondered how she knew it so that it would show up in her dreams.  
She knew she was dreaming, because Mordin had died on Tuchanka.  
This knowledge permeated her dreams, and Mordin was then in front of her on the elevator of the Shroud. She could smell the battlefield—the bodies, the blood, the distinct krogan smell of Tuchanka—she tasted blood and regret at the back of her throat. She couldn’t even say “don’t do it, Mordin. I can’t lose you.”  
“Had to be me,” he explained.  
I know, she wanted to say, someone else would have gotten it wrong.  
Mordin smiled at her.  
He went out in the flames and the boy—the boy came to her, birthed forward from the same flames that had taken her friend.  
“Why don’t you fix him?” The boy asked, moving his hands around his head.  
“What?”  
She wasn’t sure if she’d said it out loud or not as she stared down at him, turning to grab the little boy just out of her reach as the Shroud blew up above her. She flinched awake, reaching out and covering herself at the same time, yelling involuntarily as she gasped for breath.  
“Shepard?” The sweet, sleepy voice next to her drifted through the room. “Are you alright?”  
“I’m fine,” she said, lying back down, reminding herself that it was a dream. She knew that. “Let’s go back to sleep.”  
And she did, and Mordin was singing to her again. The little boy from Earth was there, singing along with Mordin. It started to feel different from the first time, but she couldn’t explain why.  
“It’s a salarian song,” he reminded her.  
Where had she heard it?  
They were at the Shroud again—Mordin in the elevator in front of her, close enough to grab, to stop. The boy was next to her, still singing beneath the sounds of war just outside the building.  
She wanted to sing back to them, so they would hear her and understand her apologizes the same way she’d understood theirs, even if they didn’t want to hear it.  
“Had to be me,” he said.  
Listen to me, she wanted to say, it doesn’t have to be you. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I’ll save you.  
But they wouldn’t listen to her. They couldn’t. They were dead.  
“Why don’t you fix him?” The boy asked next to her.  
She reached out for Mordin, grabbing the only part of him she could reach as he turned his back on her—the tech from around his shoulders. She pulled it off and tried to save him. She pulled it off and his head rolled off from his shoulders, landing with a dull thud at her feet.  
She stepped back just enough. “I’m so sorry—,” she started to say, but she couldn’t hear herself over her own thoughts.  
There were so many dead bodies before, so much blood on her hands.  
Why was this one one too much?  
She didn’t realize until it was too late. The boy grabbed her gun from her hip, stuck it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger before she could do anything.  
She woke up, adrenaline pushing her up, out of bed to check her guns and count her artillery, the taste of the battlefield building in the back of her mouth.  
“Shepard?” The voice came again, less sleepy this time.  
Did she scream? Or yell? Did she wake them up?  
“What’s wrong?” They asked.  
She swallowed the metallic taste of adrenaline and shuddered at the taste of it. “It was just a dream,” she said. She forced herself to relax the muscles in her shoulders, to unclench her jaws and fists. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”  
She could still feel the tech in her hands, still watch her mistakes every time she closed her eyes.  
“Did you know Mordin sang?” Shepard asked, wanting to fill the empty space between herself and her lover, to avoid hearing the dull thud of Mordin’s head hitting the ground and rolling towards her feet.  
“Shepard…” the voice said with understanding: mostly sympathy, but slightly reprimanding.  
“I know,” she said quietly.  
She didn’t want to talk about it. She wasn’t going to.  
“He was a good man,” they conceded. “Come back to bed.”  
She did, her heart still chugging heavily and hard like a train trying to accelerate right out of her chest. Warm arms wrapped around her, and a sweet head settled onto her shoulder. She could hear their breath, and their heartbeats slowly falling into rhythm with each other. They were alive, for now, and she could hear it and feel it as her lover fell back asleep, just as exhausted as she was from this goddamned war.  
Shepard closed her eyes, quietly humming the songs Mordin had sung to her, and trying to remember the prayers Thane had said for her.


End file.
